Ever wanted to be in charge? Well, in my own little world I will be, one day. Just not quite yet. I'm a bit tired at the moment... maybe I'll take over after I've had my little nap.
The United Dingdom - stating the bleeding obvious so you don't have to.
(Sign up to get updates direct to email or follow @Battsby on Twitter)

Pages

Sunday, 13 March 2016

Stereo

Stereotypes exist for a reason. They allow us easy access
to a wide range of reflexive responses, eliminating the need for reasoned
analysis:

Hear a Scottish voice and expect to be informed in
tedious detail exactly what they want us, the English, to pay for.

A Liverpool accent alerts us to tune out and avoid listening
to the imagined anti-Scouse cultural injustice they are protesting today.

At the first guttural syllables of a third-generation,
still unintegrated Pakistani ‘community spokesman’ I brace myself for the multiple
charges of islamophobia that are surely coming.

And when I hear the blunt, dead vowels of a South Yorkshire
denizen I cringe in sheer embarrassment at the thought of being a Yorkshireman although,
to be fair, only the north and west of that great county is truly god’s own.

If you think those stereotypes lazy, here’s a beauty.
The laziest of all stereotypes is the positively bone-idle example of a hooded,
tattooed thug, parked on the sofa, smoking skunk and scratching his all-too
fertile balls in front of always-on reality TV, living a life free of worry,
free of effort and free of all responsibilities. You can actually picture this
right now and that's because these people do exist. The people who made them,
however, will bend all the laws of the human universe to deny it. But it makes no
difference because a stereotype is also a pattern, a mould, into which
many of us have been poured and left to set, to conform to type.

Stereotypes act as handy ciphers to aid understanding and
prepare our defences – see a crop-haired, androgynous, chunky female on the television
and I don’t need to be told I am going to hear about wimmin’s rights and general
lefty issues with a touch of anti-Zionist sentiment tossed in for good measure;
oh and ‘men’. It alerts me to the need to find another avenue of entertainment and
so avoid having to listen to tired and irrational arguments about misogyny,
racism and the evils of the very free-speech, capitalist society that gives her
the freedom to practice her free-preaching.

One of the truths about a stereotype is an inability in
many to rise above the programming. So when I heard about Donald Trump
cancelling his Chicago rally because of violent protesters I didn’t need the telly
to picture the general dusky hue and temperament and political persuasions of
the multi-culti rent-a-mob; it's just the same over here. It’s interesting though, when the islamists make common cause
with the lefties to protest against a third party stereotype.
This is a dangerous act, for without the Trumps, who will defend the left and
their pets when islam takes over and sharia reigns?

See, Trump may be a
chump to many but his targets are legitimate ones. If there is to be common cause for
a better future the allies here ought to be the left and right of the west
versus the utter wrong of the rest. The events in Ankara yesterday should be yet another warning about the dangers of allowing in the Trojan horses of the stereotypical muslim world. We should be hearing the protest against
the avowed invasive intents of islam and all who would harm us and burn down our culture, what's left of it. We should be hearing it from all sides, in both ears. In stereo.

1 comment:

I too recently have been arguing that stereotyping is a good place to start when assessing a persons character. Not to do so as I found out to my cost is to weaken our ability to asses that which should happen and that which should not. Sure you cannot tar everybody with the same brush but the fail safe position is indeed to do so. Some innocents will suffer but the majority of us will be considerably better off. Exceptions have to be made but only after due diligence.